We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website.

Visa opens doors to new Center of Excellence

Posted on: 22 February 2018

Visa has unveiled its Transportation Center of Excellence, a global service that brings together the power and scope of Visa’s programs including the Visa Developer Platform, Visa Token Service, Visa Ready for Transit and Visa Global Transit Solutions with its global network of Innovation Centers and Studios.

Bill Gajda, SVP, Innovation and Strategic Partnerships at Visa said, “Today’s consumers simply want get to their next destination quickly and easily – whether commuting to work or going on holiday. Unfortunately, purchasing tickets, paying for parking or filling up the car is often inconvenient, involving long lines, complicated ticketing machines and outdated transit systems. The Transportation Center of Excellence examines how new technologies can transform the consumer experience by using digital credentials to make it easier for travel and transportation providers to seamlessly integrate payments into the customer journey.”

The Center is part of a wider program focused on giving consumers a better experience for any mode of travel, including air. By engaging directly with airlines Visa can help create innovative solutions that integrate new and emerging technologies into every kind of journey.

As part of the new program, Visa is hosting co-creation sessions at its Innovation Center located at its European headquarters in Paddington Basin. The 1,000+ square meter space, the largest in Visa’s global network of innovation centers, is an immersive environment where Visa can work side-by-side with its partners in transportation, banking, and retail – with the goal to remove friction in travel and create new and easier ways consumers can access and pay for transportation. Applying human-centered design, the program incorporates new and emerging technologies to develop capabilities in key transportation sectors, including air, where Visa has hosted co-creation sessions with the industry’s largest airlines, collaborating with them to address the consumer journey starting with planning, ticketing and in-flight experiences enabled through new technologies like virtual reality.

Last year, Visa partnered with Etihad Airways and Helios Interactive to show how Virtual Reality can enhance travellers’ in-flight experiences for the ultimate first class experience at a guest event in Barcelona.

Etihad docents led guests to a first-class seat where they donned the Google Daydream headset and embarked on their virtual journey.

Once inside the headset, guests could order their gourmet in-flight meal, choose from a selection of movies and entertainment, and book a tour for their destination city, using Visa Checkout via gaze selection to complete their purchase.

Gajda adds, “Visa has created a collaborative environment that enables developers to reimagine the consumer journey across any mode of transportation they take along with the building blocks to make that vision a reality. Through the Visa Developer Platform, they can select from a broad range of APIs (Application Program Interfaces) and SDKs (Software Development Kits) to create the next generation of commerce applications.”

The program is led out of the London Innovation Center and is open to companies from across the globe.